When I wrote my last post and said that I thought the
last two weeks were exciting and a little bit of a whirlwind, I didn’t know
what I was talking about! It has been the week-and-a-half since that time that
has been the whirlwind!
I started my PreMatriculation program at UW in Seattle and
have been commuting up to Seattle daily for class that usually runs from
9am-3pm. Tom caught me as I was walking out the door on the “first day of
school” with my back pack and banana in hand—but as you can tell, I didn’t take
time to stop long enough to really pose for the cliché photo!
I’ve been getting used to the bus life. I was taking the
7:15 am bus, but I realized that I left the house a few minutes earlier so I
could catch the 6:58 bus I ended up gaining about 30-40 minutes of on-campus
time that I could study in, otherwise, I just spent another half hour on the
bus. So, I decided to get up a little earlier so I can enjoy a more leisurely
bus ride (with less stop and go traffic) and seats like this:
I’m trying to train my brain so I don’t get motion
sick on
the bus and you know, sometimes the “mind over matter” method has worked
and I
have been able to read (which I could never do before) so I guess my
practice
is working! And, I must admit, on one day this week, I rewarded myself
for a week of bus-travel with a nice cup a chai (I'm scared that this
will become a new habit but I am determined to keep this at a minimum or
we'd go broke :) ).
It’s officially official, I have my UW ID card now.
Although, I don’t qualify for a lot of the free things that students have
access to on campus because I’m not technically paying tuition yet ;).
I’ve started adjusting to life in Seattle and like I posted
on Facebook the other day—I could
certainly get used to studying up here if it’s like this. The med school has some seriously amazing real estate.
My classmates are an eclectic and exciting bunch of people.
We have everything from UW graduates that went straight from undergrad to med school
to people that are in their late 30’s and are switching careers (they already
have a PhD or a JD and they are switching to medicine). It’s been so wonderful
to get to meet new people and to be back in the classroom where I am inspired
daily by my colleagues' ideas and ways of learning. I’m loving it! And, in case
you’re curious, this is what I look like pretty much everyday from 10-12---busy
identifying tissue samples under the microscope.
The girl next to me is
Josephine, she is one of the ones that has gone straight through from
undergrad. She’s 22 and will be at the Seattle site with me this fall (a lot of
my other classmates will be off in the other WWAMI regions).
Now that I’ve settled in to class, I’ve realized how much
more I want to stop commuting! As you probably know, Tom and I have spent the
past 3-4 weekends up in Seattle looking around at different apartments and we
finally came across one that we liked, that was not INSANELY priced and was in
a nice neighborhood with a relatively short commute time by bus to school. We
put in an application for it on Monday and we found out today that we got it! Here
are a few snapshots of my walk through of it the other day (with the current
tenants stuff still in it):
The current tenant is a dental student that just graduated. The
dental and medical students are actually quite close on the UW campus so when
she found out I was a UW med student and that I was interested in her place,
she did everything in her power to make sure we got it! I guess there’s one
perk to being a student again huh?
And to round out the blog, I of course had to mention my
most recent adventure. I was driving back from the bus station by the Tacoma
dome yesterday afternoon when I was T-boned by another driver (who was driving
a big Ford F250) who blatantly ran a red light. They hit the right rear
passenger side of me and spun me around into the oncoming traffic lane. I’m
actually surprised at how little damage was done to my car, but even though the
picture doesn’t really show it, the rear axle or something is bent and it was
not drivable.
Unfortunately, the driver was about 18 years old, driving his
parent’s truck and was without a license and his parents (who arrived on the
scene after it happened) are uninsured. The insurance company informed me today
after evaluating the car that it is totaled and will be getting back to me soon
about the $$$ details.
I’m sore, but otherwise unscathed, and feel incredibly
fortunate to be saying so. As always, these kinds of things make you realize
that you should cherish every moment you have because in one moment everything can
change. Fortunately for me, not a TON of things are changing (I just have to
battle for insurance money) but otherwise I won’t have much else changing.
For now, I’m going to be taking some ibuprofen, icing and
heating my sore muscles and continuing to get a sore neck from looking into a
microscope :) I love you all and hope that you are doing well!
Comments
Post a Comment